IP Topics

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Suggestions for a common EU strategy for Internet security

Before decisions on the regulation of the Internet and prevailing universal norms are made on a global level, Europeans must develop a common Internet strategy. Such an EU strategy, however, cannot pit security against freedom or the interests of the state against individual liberties and fundamental rights.

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Economic interests trump security and challenge Western unity

As traditional security policy is superseded by economic and energy interests, we must begin to discuss the “economization of security policy” – the implications of which go far beyond the current global financial crisis and its effects on the security policy of the West. One voice inside NATO describes what needs to be done to ensure that this commercialization of security will still allow the friendly member countries of NATO and the EU to avoid 21st century conflicts and to continue to act collectively.

Although Ban Ki-moon faces no challengers in his bid for a second term, he will have to demonstrate an improved instinct for running the United Nations. Without better leadership, the UN runs the risk of becoming irrelevant, as Western governments’ austerity cuts constrict an already tight budget and rising powers seek to limit UN interference.

Germany and Europe’s security and stability have grown since the end of the cold war. The old “German question” has been solved. Embedded in European integration, a sovereign Germany has now taken on a very new role of sharing joint responsibility for maintaining international stability and order. To maximize effective crisis management in a world in which no single nation can solve global problems, the UN Security Council system must be revised–and Germany belongs at the table.

After serving as an officer in the Soviet army in Afghanistan and Lithuania, Aslan Maskhadov took a leaf from the Baltic liberation movements and became a brilliant strategist in the first Chechnya war that won his land temporary de facto independence from Russia. He was elected Chechen president in 1997 and resumed the fight when Vladimir Putin resumed the attack. But he was a negotiator. Basayev is not.

The global peace and security order that once rested on the United Nations and international law faces a decisive test in the wake of the Iraq war. International terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and possible terrorist acquisition of WMD (something that cannot be ruled out) call for new answers to new security threats.

The United States superpower defines its own national interest as providing the world with public goods — security, human rights, liberty, and health, among others. This definition is extraordinarily enlightened, far-sighted, and humane. Who could object to it?

Tolerating human rights violations in the name of presumed crucial security interests is nothing new. We saw this trade-off in Latin America in the 1980s, and we see it in many dictatorial regimes in every region of the globe today. In the name of national security, members of minorities and political opposition movements have been and continue to be punished, tortured, and deprived of their most elementary rights.

Last year’s Iraq crisis was not just one more of the many transatlantic crises since the 1960s. It ran far deeper. It concerned power—military and political,hard and soft—and the legitimacy of the use of military force by the United States. By raising doubts about power, legitimacy, and credibility, it challenged the existing international order more than any other event since the cold war.